


Chanticleer

by BarracudaHeart



Category: OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes
Genre: A raymond goes defective and becomes a country boy, Based on drawings by Stevie Borbolla, Chickens, Comedy, Gen, Raymond and his admiring throng of chickens, Tongue-in-cheek, country living, farming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 01:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14944800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarracudaHeart/pseuds/BarracudaHeart
Summary: Boxmore Enterprises no longer ships through the post office following a terrible event.





	Chanticleer

  
  


Raymond could hardly hide his delight as he felt his carrier box get lifted off the truck, the long journey from Boxmore finally over. His initial hivemind’s creation seemed like only yesterday. It hadn’t been too long since his first model was activated, and he became the company’s top seller. 

In fact, he’d been selling so well, he himself couldn’t get onto the company’s official shipping truck, and had to be mailed out via the postal service. A bit unorthodox (and in his opinion, not half as sophisticated), but so long as he was able to make the grand entrance needed to absolutely stun his new master of villainy, it was worth it!

The bot chuckled under his breath as he felt the delivery man’s pushcart halt and settle his box on the ground, and he poised himself in wait to be opened.

After several minutes, he could hear the sound of prying at the edge, the tip of a crowbar bursting the seam, and immediately, Raymond burst the box open with a theatrical kick, clutching a rose dramatically to his chest.

Not hearing the immediate gasp of delight and amazement from whoever his new master was, Raymond opened his eyes, and was met face to face with thick spectacles over an aged living tumbleweed with limbs, wearing overalls and a straw hat.

“What in tarnation? This isn’t the shovel I ordered!”

* * *

Much to Raymond’s relief, protocol said nothing about package mishaps resulting in him needing to terminate himself, so long as he could prove useful to whoever he was appointed to, even by mistake. 

But alas, much to Raymond’s dismay, his accidental new master definitely had no villainous plans in mind. Not unless farms were evil.

“I’ve been needin’ a farmhand, ever since my young’ns drifted off to who knows where,” the walking tumbleweed rambled simply as he guided the disappointed henchbot through the too-quaint farmhouse, “In exchange for the workn’ you’ll be doing, I can offer y’a room for lil’ to none. Y’all will have to pay for your own internets and shoppin’, and whatever other gadgets and doodads y’kids these days have, but I’ll provide the sleep and grub and hot water.”

“The last two won’t be necessary,” Raymond muttered pompously, looking with bored disdain at the dusty knickknacks on the walls and shelves, and looked out the window to see the dusty grassy plains and dirt roads. 

“Y’kids and yer fancy diets,” the farmer chuckled, “Well all th’same yer welcome to eat with me and the missus-” he pointed to a potted cactus with a face drawn onto it, “She don’t say much.”

Raymond tried to look into whatever eyes were behind the thick spectacles and couldn’t find any, just giving a forced, fake smile, “Great. Thank you.”  Boxmore was probably going to get a nasty complaint from some villain who didn’t get their order, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

After a very quiet and odd dinner, the farmer dried off the last of the dishes, putting it on the stack balanced in Raymond’s hands, “Don’t think I got a name from you.”

“Raymond,” the robot spoke flatly, slightly despondent at being given such a menial, domestic task.

“Huh. Fancy name for a feller. Y’ever go by Ray Ray?”, he asked as he had the other put the dishes away.

Before Raymond could immediately shut that down, the farmer spoke up, “Y’can call me Weeds. Not Mister Weeds, I don’t do all that ‘mister’ stuff. Anyway, y’should get settled for bed because I’m gonna have you startin’ bright n’early at 4:30.”

_ In the morning???? _

“‘Night, Ray Ray!”, Weeds waved off, carrying the potted cactus wife of his to his own room, shutting the door, and leaving Raymond to wander into his own room.

It looked like it hadn’t been dusted in eons, and even without smell receptors, Raymond felt the urge to sneeze. The blanket looked like it was fairly moth-eaten, and the fact that the sun had hardly set irritated Raymond so much. He was all about the night life, and as far as he knew, there was probably nothing for entertainment in this backwash of a town unless he used his jetpower functions to travel. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in the rickety old truck Weeds had parked in front of the farmhouse. He was much too sophisticated for that.

He lay on the bed with a groan, staring up at the ceiling with such a glare, he could have bore a hole through it.

* * *

His first few days on the farm were a disaster, and Raymond would insist that none of this was his fault in any way whatsoever. He was built for destruction and being beautiful, not farmwork and being filthy!

One of his first tasks had been to ‘pick the apple trees clean’. Raymond, not wanting to shirk even such a boring assignment, had taken it as literally as he could, and picked the trees of not only every apple, but every leaf, leaving them as morbid stalks sat in rows. And thanks to his athletic strengths and horsepower but no control, all of the apples that he’d chucked into buckets were either mush or very badly bruised.

Cleaning the barnyard was another thing he misinterpreted terribly. If Weeds had just told Raymond to get rid of litter and animal waste, the robot would have probably not gone through the entire yard with industrial power soap and polish, and left everything almost too sterile and sparkling.

“What happened to my pigs’ mud?!”

“...what’s a pig?”

Raymond also discovered true terror in the form of a very large, four legged animal that Weeds dubbed “Bessie”. The robot had no idea what the farmer had meant by “milking Bessie”, but a short demonstration made it horrifically clear. When he was left alone with the animal, he tried to follow the farmer’s example, but within three minutes he was running for dear life from a snorting and stomping Bessie, and he was left hiding in a tree as she stalked him.

Weeds was in hysterics at the sight, “That cow sure don’t like you, Ray Ray!”

“Th-this beast is a cow?! I thought she was a Bessie!”

Weeds didn’t let up the laughter at seeing the results of Raymond’s “help” around the farm, “Yer not used to the farm life huh, Ray Ray? Don’t you worry yerself over it too much, I’ll get you used t’everything ‘round here.”

Raymond took an exceptionally long time to clean himself of all the filth for the first few days, finding himself absolutely disgusting by the time the work day was over, but still was able to get himself sparkling in time for dinner with the old tumbleweed man and his weird potted cactus wife, which he hardly would touch. Then dishes, turning off lights after Weeds finished nighttime feeding for the animals, then bed. 

Out of servitude to his ‘master’ Raymond just didn’t have the tongue to express that his talents were being wasted here. Hopefully soon enough, the farmer would realize he’d made a mistake in taking him in...but then that would result in himself being terminated.

Ah well...there were hundreds of him back home. And they were probably all having a better time than he was.

* * *

The fourth morning started differently. Weeds decided Raymond might find promise in the task he usually did first thing: feeding the animals.

While the henchbot found it much easier and more successful to just fill troughs from buckets of mush and grain it certainly didn’t feel too rewarding, having to stare at smelly, dirty cattle and pigs as they greedily swallowed unappetizing-looking glop. 

“Here’s some chickenfeed,” Weeds suddenly dumped a very large, heavy bag of grainy substance into Raymond’s unsuspecting arms, leaving him to topple over with a yelp, “The girls are probably hungry!”

“The girls?”

“Chicken coop!”, the farmer thumbed to the enclosure on the edge of the property, “Got a dozen hens in there right now. Had an old rooster up until last month, so now it’s just ladies in there. Get ‘em all fed, and I’ll show you how to look for eggs.”

Raymond was almost reluctant to enter the coop. He’d never seen chickens before, and if they were anything like cows or pigs, he wasn’t going to have a good time. 

Stepping inside, to his surprise, the enclosure was surprisingly quiet, and seemed void of anything large or dangerous. It didn’t even seem like any big animals could fit in there, the walls close together and lined with square concaved spaces full of straw. 

Raymond wasn’t sure if these supposed chickens were even here. But as he shifted the bag of feed in his arms, the piles of straw began moving, and suddenly he was greeted by twelve brown and white fluffy masses of feathers that were quick to examine the intruder in their coop. 

Almost immediately, he felt himself be stared down by several pairs of beady eyes like every other animal he’d met on the farm, but for once he didn’t feel like he was going to get assaulted or left smelling horrible. Well...that was a good start.

As he dumped more than enough feed on the ground, the chickens began to make delighted noises. At first, he assumed at their breakfast. But even after they were all stuffed full of feed, fat and happy, they were still making noise and crowding him, and he was just left to stand there in slight confusion.

When one of the bird suddenly was on his shoulder, and another on his head, he went stiff in surprise, and spoke as loudly as he could, “Ahhh….coach- I mean….Weeds?”

The farmer had poked his head in and immediately began to laugh, “I’ll be darned! They dang well think you’re one of them!”

“Excuse me?!”

“They done gone and adopted you as one of their own!”, the farmer cackled, “I ain’t seen the girls like this since we had the rooster! Y’must look like one to them with yer honker and fancy hair!”

“I-”, Raymond began, blushing slightly as he felt the chicken on his shoulder nuzzling up to him, and couldn’t help but smile with a slight sense of pride, “Well roosters must be quite handsome if they think I am one!”

More delighted clucks and a chicken settling in his lap seemed to confirm this, and Raymond was quite satisfied to have at least one task that wasn’t thankless, and that confirmed that he still was indeed the most attractive person within 100 miles.

* * *

Ever since Raymond started his mornings with the chickens, it seemed like things slowly became a little more tolerable. Waking up before dawn didn’t leave him as grouchy, the sunrise actually being sort of enjoyable to watch as he worked.

Realizing his previous errors, he’d taken a gentler hand at handling crops, and not completely destroying an orchard’s worth of fruit. By noon, he’d picked a whole row of trees clean, with not a single bruised or mushy apple in any of the barrels.

Milking the cows and tending to the pigs was still less pleasant and filthy, but it was a lot less of a pain than before. He did learn, however, that even after handling Bessie successfully, it was certainly not a good idea to gloat right in her face as she managed to headbutt him hard enough to leave a dent in his midriff. 

When Weeds needed a field to be plowed and sewn with seeds, Raymond discovered his technology was quite useful, acting as a makeshift plow in place of whatever large machines the farmer would have needed, but lacked. The tumbleweed wiped away a tear of pride as he babbled to his wife that he couldn’t have found a better farmhand.

The bot even managed to find out how pleasant an apple tasted. Sure. Robots didn’t need to eat. But it sure tasted as something of a comfort.

And soon enough, he started to actually enjoy the routine. Granted, it wasn’t as much of an adrenaline rush as fighting heroes or causing destruction, but in the time that he was so far away from the hivemind and the default factory setting, he found comfort in the country, the simplicity. But especially the chickens. Having a multitude of grateful admirers on a daily basis without any stop in sight was something he was programmed to absolutely adore, and it was all he really could ask for.

During breaks between chores, Raymond would check on them, converse with them, even if they couldn’t exactly talk right back, and would allow himself to be a perch for them in the evening after dinner, resulting in at least three or four chickens along his nose, one on each shoulder, and the rest on his lap or by his legs.  One time he danced for them, and he didn’t feel the least bit silly. He’d even gotten to the point of giving them all names: Camilla, Chenille, Chandra, Cassandra, Celine, Chantilly, Charlene, Carolyn, Charmaine, Celestine, Chamomile, and Brenda. 

Speaking of names, he didn’t feel his eye twitch in irritation when Weeds called him ‘Ray Ray’ anymore. In fact, he kind of liked it. Of all the 500 Raymonds that got produced in the same line that day at Boxmore, he was the only Ray Ray. 

And that was way more satisfactory than factory setting.   
  


* * *

One night, Ray Ray was still awake in his room when he heard the sound of disgruntled and panicked squawking from outside, and ran outside to check on his dear admirers.

“Ladies! I heard a disturbance!”, he spoke dramatically, “What is going on?!”

A figure snuck out of the coop, cursing under their breath as they tripped and dropped two of the several chickens they had under their arms, and immediately Ray Ray was upon them, grabbing them by the collar.

“Aw nuts!”, the figure yelped, whining as their mask was pulled off their face, revealing a scrawny Fox-Guy who was probably not even a level -2.

“You had a lot of nerve to come here, and try to steal my-”

“H-hey wait a minute, I ordered one of you pompadour weirdos from Boxmore two months ago!”

“Wh- excuse me?”, Ray Ray gasped, staring at the thief in his hands.

“Yeah! And instead I got a stupid shovel!”, the fox whined, “I don’t have the level strength to pull off the big heists, so I’m startin’ back at square one! If only I’d gotten one of you guys like I ordered then I’d have-”

“I WAS ALMOST SOLD TO A CHICKEN THIEF?!”, Ray Ray shrieked in horror as he realized what his fate might have been.

“What?!”

The robot didn’t even grace the fox with an answer, instead rearing up a mighty kick to launch him into the sky, screaming as he sailed over the moon, fur and feathers floating about.

Ray Ray stared into the sky with a glare to make sure he wasn’t coming back, and sighed, “Well...that was a bullet dodged.”

Much to his immediate relief, all twelve birds were accounted for and little the worse for wear. He made sure to usher them all back into the coop and sat there to try and keep them calm.

This wasn’t the fate he was assigned to, but it was the one he chose not to reject.

* * *

At least a month after the incident, there was no hide nor hair of the fox-guy, and thankfully no recall notices from Boxmore.

Even if there had been the latter, Ray Ray wouldn’t have regarded it. He hardly felt connected to his hivemind anymore, and he was fine with that. As weird as Weeds was, he was definitely more rewarding of a master than some petty chicken thieving fox might have been. Besides if they really wanted a henchbot so bad, they could just order another.

One breezy afternoon, after a morning of chores, Ray Ray noticed Weeds standing at the side of the dirt road, his potted cactus plant wife sat facing him.

“Er...what are you doing?”, the robot asked as he walked over.

“Y’feel that breeze, son? That’s the winds of change. Us tumblers have to take that wind sooner or later?”

“...Not sure I follow this,” Ray Ray spoke flatly.

“I’m movin’ on,” Weeds spoke distantly, “The wind is callin’ me.”

“B-but you own this farm!”

“And you’ve managed to handle everything there is to here by yerself, son. You have the makin’s of a true farmer...even if y’are a city boy.”

“But I-”

“And y’got the missus there!”, the tumbleweed man gestured to the potted cactus with a drawn face on it, “The farm is yours, son.”

Before Ray Ray could respond in his shock, the wind blew a strong gust, blowing Weeds off his feet, and sending him slowly and weightlessly rolling down the road. As he blew along, bumping into fenceposts and trees, he called out to Ray Ray, “BYE!!”

The robot couldn’t even respond right. That farmer had been so terribly weird, and yet he provided him with a purpose he wouldn’t have left for anything his factory setting would have offered.

Putting the cactus on the front porch, and opening the coop to let his beloved chickens out, Ray Ray stared at the sunset, and decided, once and for all, there really hadn’t been a mixup after all.

Maybe this was really where he needed to be.

* * *

 

“And THAT’S why we never ship through the post office! Because they’ll slip up once, send the order out into the middle of nowhere, and next thing you know, a robot goes defective and lives some stupid peaceful life as a _simple country bumpkin!!_ ”, Boxman slammed his fist on the desk as he concluded the horror story to his robot children.

“That’s horrifying!!”, Darrell gasped, “I can’t believe that happened to one of you!”, he pointed at Raymond, who looked beyond traumatized.

“There’s one of me?? Living on a farm?? With animals?!??!? AND HE’S HAPPY?????”, he gasped, shaking in terror.

“G-guys,” Shannon gulped, “If a Raymond can go defective, that means I probably can too...what if there’s one of me out there and she’s….GOOD?!”, she wailed in fright.

“Oh god don’t say things like that, dear sister,” Raymond grabbed her shoulder, “It’s bad enough my reputation was tainted with this….”

“Dad, what can we do about this?”, Darrell almost cried, “He’s still out there...on that farm, and being happy!”

“At Boxmore, there are no refunds, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s so defective, it’s better to just forget about his horrifying existence…..well goodnight kids!”, Boxmore sped off out of the room and left the three to sit in the dark alone.

They all checked under their beds for chickens that night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a conversation I had at 1am last night with my friend TheLoneFryman. We both have a liking for Raymond. :D


End file.
